Matteo Salvini’s European Vision

Date: 12‑09‑2020

Source: The Wall Street Journal By Adam O’Neal

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The Italian populist wants to rebuild his country’s economy—and reshape the Continent’s place in the world.

If Italy held an election today, the polls suggest Matteo Salvini would become the next prime minister. But on a balmy evening in late August, the Lega leader seems as if he’d be more comfortable at the beach than the Chigi Palace. The casual look—boat shoes, shorts and a white button‑down—belies his seriousness. Mr. Salvini, 47, says he held five rallies that day, with one more planned for the evening. Although national elections aren’t scheduled for another three years, he doesn’t believe he’ll have to wait that long for the government to collapse. And he already has ideas for what he’d do in the top job.

Mr. Salvini’s clearest path to power runs through a center‑right coalition with the conservative Fratelli d’Italia and Silvio Berlusconi’s pro‑business Forza Italia. His own party has been described as nationalist, populist, conservative, far‑right and even fascist. “In Italy the left‑right, fascist‑communist distinctions do not count much,” he says in Italian. “I think that the Lega is far beyond ideologies.” But he doesn’t reject all labels: “I can accept ‘sovereigntists.’ That is, the Italian identity, its culture, history, laws, religion. I can also accept ‘populist,’ which some people consider an insult, but I think it’s a compliment.”

He also can be a pragmatist. Lega was founded in 1991 as Lega Nord—the Northern League—a regional party focused on seeking more autonomy for the country’s wealthier north. Mr. Salvini has led the party since 2013 and gave it national appeal by emphasizing strict opposition to illegal immigration and skepticism of the European Union. “Until I die, I will be a federalist,” he says. “Yet we must unite the country in order to compete with the others. Otherwise the northern regions alone cannot be successful.”

Salvini’s Sardine surprise

Date: 30‑01‑2020

Source: The Economist

Regional elections in Italy buttress the government

Another blunder by the populist leader of the Northern League

It is probably the most famous of modern Italian political aphorisms. “Power wears out those who do not have it,” quipped the late Giulio Andreotti, a long‑serving prime minister. His words had a special relevance this week for Matteo Salvini, leader of the right‑wing Northern League, as he pondered the results of his second big miscalculation in five months. On January 26th the League’s candidate for governor failed to conquer the region of Emilia‑Romagna in a vote that Mr Salvini had touted as a referendum on whether he should lead Italy.

Mr Salvini has only been out of power since August last year. Until then he was one of two deputy prime ministers in the first cabinet of Giuseppe Conte, a technocrat; he wielded a decisive influence over policy as head of the party that has led in the polls since mid‑2018. But then he torpedoed the coalition government in a bid to force an election, hoping it would give him an outright parliamentary majority and untrammelled powers. His rivals responded by forming a new coalition without him.

Italy’s progressives had lost hope. The Sardines movement is starting to restore it

Date: 29‑01‑2020

Source: The Guardian

Success in Sunday’s regional election in northern Italy showed how Salvini’s far‑right politics can be defeated

‘The independent initiative called on citizens to congregate in their local piazzas.’

Supporters of Italy’s centre‑left Democratic party (PD) breathed a sigh of relief on Sunday evening as their candidate in Emilia‑Romagna saw‑off competition from Matteo Salvini’s far‑right League to win the regional elections. That defeat here was even a prospect, though, shows just how much Italy’s political geography has changed.

Historically Emilia‑Romagna, in the north of the country, is a bedrock of communism and has had an unbroken string of leftist governments since the second world war. But the left has been losing ground since the financial crisis of 2008 – as in so much of the continent – with austerity‑stricken rural communities and provincial towns in particular drifting rightwards. Winning in the region would have been a real coup for Salvini, who took personal control of the local campaign.

His plans may have been thwarted, but there is little to suggest that Salvini is losing momentum. While the League may have failed to win over the region as a whole, it has consolidated support in some of Emilia’s major cities. Similarly, at a national level the polls still suggest Salvini’s party is well‑positioned to form a majority government in coalition with other rightwing parties, including the far‑right Brothers of Italy and Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia when the opportunity arises. Such a scenario was reinforced by the results of another vote on Sunday in the poor southern region of Calabria: while the League won just 12%, it also oversaw collaboration among the other rightwing parties to snatch the territory from the incumbent PD governor.

Italy’s would-be strongman suddenly looks more vulnerable

Date: 15-08-2019
Source: The Economist

Salvini stumbles

But nothing is predictable about Italian politics

Hubris is an occupational hazard for political leaders. Two of Italy’s recent prime ministers, Silvio Berlusconi and Matteo Renzi, stumbled just when it seemed they could do whatever they wanted. (Mr Renzi wanted to change the constitution; Mr Berlusconi wanted to hold “bunga bunga” sex parties. In both cases, voters objected.)

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Now Matteo Salvini, the leader of the populist Northern League, wants to ditch his coalition partners in the anti-establishment Five Star Movement (m5s), bring down the government that is led by Giuseppe Conte, an independent, and hustle the country into a snap election so as to give himself what he has termed “full powers”. This would enable him to impose, among other things, a radically expansionist budget for 2020. Mr Salvini claims that a “fiscal shock” is needed to jolt the moribund Italian economy back to life. Critics fear it could instead pitch the country, which has debts of over 130% of gdp, into a new financial crisis, along with the rest of the euro zone.

So the stakes were high when, on August 9th, the League tabled a Senate motion of no confidence in Mr Conte. Mr Salvini, a deputy prime minister, did not, however, withdraw either himself or his ministers from the cabinet—a move that would have made the fall of the government inevitable. And on August 13th, a hastily reconvened upper house rejected the League’s demand for a confidence debate to be held the very next day.

The luckless Mr Conte will still have to go to parliament to explain a crisis that is not of his making. But he will start his visit to the two chambers on August 20th, this date having been set by a majority that for the first time united the m5s with the opposition, centre-left Democratic Party (pd) and a handful of regionalists and independents. That raised the possibility that Mr Conte, who belongs to neither party in his coalition, might not get the thumbs-down, or that, if he resigned, a new government could even be formed, backed by the Five Stars and the pd.

Italy is out of recession, but for how long?

Date: 11-05-2019
Source: The Economist

A scrap of good news on the economic front

In most of the 19 euro-zone countries, provisional first-quarter economic growth data offered pleasant surprises. But in Italy they had a special importance. The economy grew by 0.2% compared with the previous quarter, ending a short, shallow recession in the second half of 2018.

The end of the contraction came at a politically delicate moment as the two parties in Giuseppe Conte’s governing coalition battle for votes in the European elections later this month. The hard-right Northern League has barely half as many seats in parliament as the anti-establishment Five Star Movement (m5s). But, under its hyperactive, media-savvy leader, Matteo Salvini, it has overtaken m5s in the polls.

If the League wins more of Italy’s 73 European Parliament seats than its rivals do on May 26th, it will become the dominant coalition partner (many would argue that this has already occurred, since Mr Salvini is so powerful a figure). But a good result could also tempt Mr Salvini to put an end to the League’s relentlessly fractious coalition with the more moderate m5s and force a snap election that would give him the votes needed for a more homogeneously right-wing coalition with the formerly neo-fascist Brothers of Italy and what is left of Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia party.

taly’s Salvini Rises, With Fiery Words and Pragmatic Decisions

Date: 13-02-2019
Source: The Wall Street Journal

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Interior minister, head of the ruling League party, has become a central figure in efforts to build a pan-European alliance of nationalists and nativists

PIANELLA, Italy—Far-right lnterior Minister Matteo Salvini strolled through a crowd of supporters in the main square of this southern Abruzzo town. Leaping on stage to campaign for regional elections, Mr. Salvini took aim at prosecutors who have charged him with kidnapping 177 African migrants last year after he refused to let them disembark from a rescue ship.

“They will have to put me on trial for the next 20 years, because I’ll go on blocking the migrants ships,” Mr. Salvini told the cheering crowd last week. “If they think they are scaring somebody, they chose the wrong person.”

In practice, though, Mr. Salvini is working to preserve his immunity against prosecution as a member of Italy’s Senate. His electioneering effort worked. On Sunday, a far-right candidate for governor backed by Mr. Salvini’s League party won the Abruzzo election.

Mr. Salvini is one of the fastest-rising politicians in a major European Union country. He has turned the League, a moribund regional movement in Italy’s north, into the nation’s most popular political force. His combative anti-immigration rhetoric and down-to-earth persona on social media have tapped anger at Italy’s aloof, ineffectual political establishment in swaths of Italian society.

A heroic sailor faces expulsion from Italy’s Five Star Movement

Date: 22-11-2018
Source: The Economist

Captain Gregorio De Falco shows the cracks within the ruling coalition

Seldom has the morale of Italians fallen as low as in 2012 when the Costa Concordia, a cruise ship, was wrecked near the Tuscan coast and abandoned by its Italian captain. Thirty-two passengers and crew died. The giant capsized hulk seemed to symbolise the failure of a country that months earlier had almost sunk the euro. But one man preserved Italy’s self-respect. Recordings surfaced of a coast-guard officer, Gregorio De Falco, furiously rebuking the skipper. His (unheeded) order to Captain Francesco Schettino to “Get on board, for fuck’s sake” became a national catchphrase.

Captain De Falco has since entered politics. In March he was elected a senator for the anti-establishment Five Star Movement (m5s), which has pledged to clean up Italian politics. Yet barely eight months on, this national hero is facing expulsion from the movement’s group in the upper house, having twice put his conscience ahead of his party. On November 7th Mr De Falco was among five m5s senators who refused to vote for a decree on security and immigration backed by the government, a coalition between m5sand the hard-right Northern League.

Italien marschiert wieder Richtung Abgrund

Neue Schuldenpläne für Wahlgeschenke

Italiens populistische Regierung will die Schulden dramatisch erhöhen – gegen alle Abmachungen mit Brüssel und gegen den eigenen Finanzminister. Es ist ein hochriskantes Spiel.

Von Hans-Jürgen Schlamp, Rom

Donnerstag, 27.09.2018 10:30 Uhr, spiegel.de

Wahlen zu gewinnen ist leicht: Man verspricht ein Mindesteinkommen für alle, Steuersenkungen, einen früheren Rentenbeginn, mehr Geld für Krankenhäuser, Schulen und Polizei – und die Stimmen kommen. So haben es in Italien die rechtsnationale Lega und die populistische 5-Sterne-Bewegung zur klaren Mehrheit gebracht.

Regieren ist da schon schwieriger. Denn da muss man sagen, wie man die Wohltaten bezahlen will. An dem Punkt ist die römische Koalition gerade. Und weiß nicht weiter.

Deswegen gibt es seit Wochen internen Krach. Wechselseitig drohen sich die Koalitionäre mit Neuwahlen, lassen durchsickern, dass sie mit anderen potenziellen Partnern sprechen. Die 5-Sterne-Bewegung drohte, die – vermutlich sowieso verfassungswidrigen – Migrations- und Sicherheitsgesetze der Lega im Parlament zu blockieren. Die verkündete im Gegenzug, das wichtigste Wahlversprechen der Sterne-Truppe, ein Grundeinkommen für alle, zu torpedieren. Weil es zu viel Geld koste.

Italy is turning into a lost case

Date: 30-08-2018
Source: The Economist
Subject: Tensions rise between Italy and the EU

Migrants and the economy are the flashpoints

AS ITALIANS trickled back to the cities from holidays on the coast and in the sun-baked countryside, the scene was set this week for what promises to be a difficult autumn. Over both the enduring problem of what to do about migrants arriving from north Africa and the even older problem of Italy’s dangerously anaemic economy, clashes with the EU are looming.

In the latest flexing of his muscles, Italy’s interior minister and leader of the Northern League, the pugnacious Matteo Salvini, kept more than a hundred asylum-seekers cooped up on one of Italy’s coast-guard vessels, the Ubaldo Diciotti, for almost a week as he demanded EU agreement on a policy for the redistribution of migrants. After a meeting in Brussels ended without progress, the Italian Catholic church helped to broker a deal. Most of the asylum-seekers entered Italy under its auspices; 20 each went to Ireland and, somewhat improbably, to Albania.

But this is only a temporary and partial climb-down. Mr Salvini and his political soulmate, Viktor Orban, the prime minister of Hungary, made clear during a meeting in Italy this week that they plan to build an EU-wide, anti-immigration front for the European elections next year (though they are at odds over the sharing of migrants). They plan to challenge the centrist alliance that France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, is trying to forge, and which they depict as pro-immigration. Mr Salvini said they were at a “historic turning point” in Europe. With traditional conservatives increasingly clashing with hardline populists, he may well be right.

The Italian Horror Show

Date: 26-07-2018
Source: The Economist
Subject: Matteo Salvini, Italy’s de facto leader, is instinctively authoritarian

But he is also an opportunist constrained by Italy’s rickety finances

WHEN the Northern League linked up with the Five Star Movement (M5S) to form Western Europe’s first all-populist government of recent times, it was clear which was the junior partner. The League had won barely half as many votes at the general election in March. Yet in the absence of the new prime minister, Giuseppe Conte, it was the League’s leader, Matteo Salvini, who chaired the new government’s first cabinet. That was apparently because, at 45, he was older than his fellow-deputy premier, Luigi Di Maio of the M5S, then aged just 31.

But it was an augury: hyper-active and omnipresent, Mr Salvini has since set the agenda for the media and the government. Pointedly, he has continued to address rallies under his electoral slogan of “Salvini premier” (“Salvini prime minister”). It still adorns his and his party’s websites, Facebook and Twitter pages. Only now, almost five months after the vote, is it starting to give way to a new refrain: Prima gli Italiani (“Italians first”), an echo, conscious or unconscious, of a Donald Trump slogan.

One criticism of the League’s leader is that he acts as if he is still on the hustings. It is not one to which he is likely to pay much heed. Since March 4th, polls suggest, he has closed the gap with the M5S. Both parties now have a following of around 30%. Mr Salvini has achieved this feat by hammering away at the issue of illegal immigration, and deploying a communications strategy that, according to Domenico Ferrara, one of his biographers, Mr Salvini sums up in an acronym: TRT. It stands for Territory, Internet (rete in Italian), Television. Unlike many politicians, Mr Salvini has not abandoned either the old media or an even older way of communicating with voters by speaking to them directly, at rallies and on the street. But his use of social media is cannier and more intensive than that of Mr Di Maio of the supposedly technologically astute young M5S. From an iPad he carries everywhere, the League leader keeps up a barrage of tweets and posts to Facebook and Instagram. Mr Ferrara says that Mr Salvini does not use ghostwriters, relying instead on a software programme, dubbed The Beast, written for him by a university lecturer from Verona. It monitors reaction to his output, allowing him to emphasise whatever elicits the most favourable reception.